SAN FRANCISCO -- Instagram may have put its controversial plan to share user content with advertisers on the back burner for now. But the move did little to cool the tempers of many members who remain fearful that the photo-sharing service will still try to profit from their creative grist.

After co-founder Kevin Systrom posted a second mea-culpa blog post about the proposed changes to the site's terms of service agreement, saying "Instagram has no intention of selling your photos," many users seemed doubtful Friday of the service's true intentions.

"I just read the blog!" wrote a user named "zuzublue." "I think they're not changing anything."

The Instagram logo is displayed on an Apple iPhone on Dec. 18, 2012, in Fairfax. Users of the popular photo-sharing app Instagram were angered over language in Instagram's new terms of service that states that a business may use any of the users' photographs in advertising without compensation to the user. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

And "kevinshea_nyc" commented: "I really don't see the difference here. Your photos can still be sold by this platform to marketers."

Systrom's latest statement, which first appeared on Instagram's blog Thursday, seemed to muddy the waters even more. And Instagram spokeswoman Meredith Chin seemed to validate the premise presented by this newspaper in an email that Instagram was simply putting the advertising plan on hold in the hopes of repackaging it in a more digestible form.

"Yes," Chin replied, "you are correct."

Later, she added "I can't comment on speculation of exactly how advertising will work in the future. What I can tell you is we currently don't have any specific plans around advertising on Instagram, which is why we reinstated the original terms for that section. If and when we do, we'll come back to our users and start the conversation again."

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The brouhaha first broke out earlier this week as word spread of the service's new and controversial policy. Many users put up black screens instead of photos in a show of protest. And some of the site's more professional and well-known users threatened to leave Instagram for alternative sites.

In his blog post on Thursday, titled "Updated Terms of Service Based on Your Feedback," Systrom began with an apology.

"Earlier this week," he wrote, "we introduced a set of updates to our privacy policy and terms of service to help our users better understand our service. In the days since, it became clear that we failed to fulfill what I consider one of our most important responsibilities -- to communicate our intentions clearly. I am sorry for that, and I am focused on making it right."

But later in the post, Systrom seemed to leave the door open to some version of content sharing with advertisers.

"It seems like Instagram will still try and sell photos to ad agencies and the users won't be getting compensation -- Instagram will," said Kevin Davis, co-founder of photosocial site Rawporter.

"Once everyone gets distracted by the holidays," he said, "Instagram will come back and do this again, but much more subtly. Either they didn't think it through the first time, or they figured users wouldn't care. Now they realize people feel these photos belong to them and don't want anyone else to profit from them."